World trembles in confusion and/or fear at Iran’s fiberglass airplane

Iran recently took the wraps off its Qaher-313 "new super modern fighter plane," seen here nose-on. The quality of the aircraft shown in these pictures is leading some observers to wonder if Iran is playing a joke on the rest of the world. This plane is almost certainly a mock-up, because if it's not—well, look, I can only assume that the country employs at least one aerospace engineer, right? This has to be a joke, right?

The aircraft's skin is remarkably shiny and irregular. Stealth aircraft derive no small degree of their stealthiness from a coating of radar-absorbent material; the skin of a modern stealth aircraft requires constant maintenance and upkeep, with ground crews having to pay attention to the height of individual screws in the aircraft's skin and apply putty to irregularities. The -313's finish is amateurish at best.

It's uncertain what type of powerplant lurks within the -313 (if indeed there is one), but its intakes appear to be too small to realistically support anything substantial. Also visible from this angle, again, is the shiny, bumpy surface.

The -313 features both canards and droop-tipped wings, possibly borrowing characteristics from the B-70 Valkyrie and the Bird of Prey technology demonstrator. Or maybe they just thought it looked cool.

The large protective cap over the engine makes it impossible to judge for certain, but there appears to be no engine nozzle at all. It's doubtful this demonstrator/prototype/mock-up has a powerplant. Others have noted that a jet with an engine this recessed would likely catch on fire and melt. Or explode. Or both!

More details on the -313's underside. An aircraft's radar cross-section is more than anything a function of its shape (but not so much, as common sense would have you believe, its size). Right angles reflect radar waves back at the sender, and non-right angles tend to bounce them off in other directions, so early stealth designs like the F-117A used faceted shapes to confound radar. Computing a radar cross-section involves a hell of a lot of math, and computers in the mid-1970s just weren't that fast. Modern stealth aircraft incorporate curves because modern computers are fast and can perform far more complex RCS calculations than were feasible in the early days of stealth. The -313 employs facets—though its skin is janky enough to make much of the stealth math moot.

The -313's canopy has ludicrously bad optical qualities—note the scratches and distortion. Additionally, several sources note that the nose is far too tiny to contain anything like a useful radar.

With a pilot seated in the cockpit, the front of the plane appears to be rather tiny. Fighter aircraft cockpits are notoriously small, leading to the common phrase among fighter jocks of "strapping on" the aircraft, but there's a difference between "small" and "comical," and the -313 is definitely erring on the wrong side of that line.

The cockpit boasts instrumentation plucked directly from civilian aviation and appears to lack a heads-up display. It also appears to be made of fiberglass. I showed this picture to Science Editor Dr. John Timmer, who knows a thing or two about how science works, and after a moment of silence he responded by saying, "No f------ way."

Just in case the previous picture wasn't clear enough.

“This new fighter jet is a bomberand [sic] it is fully engineered by Iranian scientists and has exceptional features,” Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is quoted as saying. "This fighter is one of the most sophisticated fighter jets in the world, and we just talk [sic] to its test pilot, and he expressed great satisfaction for the flight performance as a professional pilot.”

....so, there's that, at least.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stands with Iran's military leaders, reading what I can only assume to be the plane's instruction manual. Judging by the quality of its construction, I'd guess he's looking for where the rubber band goes.

"The advance computer designing software (CATIA) were used for designing F-313, and aerodynamic analysis methods such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) also were used, with the help of numerical grid generation software (GAMBIT), flow analysis software (FLUENT), and other design computation software, which shows a complete scientific work in various areas of indigenous scientific and technology was used for F-313," notes news outlet Mehr News, indicating that at some point some actual science was involved with the aircraft's design.

The Boeing-built "Bird of Prey" technology demonstrator, which shares some visual design cues with the -313—though it should be noted that there's photographic evidence of Bird of Prey actually flying. Unlike the -313.

This is a B-2 stealth bomber, an actual airplane that actually flies in the air. Its radar-absorbant skin is actually radar-absorbant and doesn't look like it has much in common with the photographs of the -313 that have been made available. Note that the B-2 benefited from far more computer-aided design than its older cousin the F-117A, and its design is quite curvy.

The F-22 can operate without being detected by most Super High Frequency search and fire control radars, but UHF radars operating in the low S band and below can defeat its stealth materials' absorption.

Lee Hutchinson
Lee is the Senior Technology Editor at Ars and oversees gadget, automotive, IT, and culture content. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX. Emaillee.hutchinson@arstechnica.com